


don't talk, just hold me closer

by canardroublard



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, Canon Temporary Character Death, Casual Sex, Complicated Relationships, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Older Man/Younger Woman, One-sided pining, Season/Series 02, having fun with sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-16 19:15:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18697570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canardroublard/pseuds/canardroublard
Summary: She waylays his protests by reminding him that she's already considered and dismissed exactly twenty-seven reasons why this is a bad idea, which has to be the most ridiculous and unflattering proposition he's ever received.





	don't talk, just hold me closer

It takes Chris by surprise when Burnham slips her hand atop his, her eyes fixed on his face before they dart away.

That it's a surprise disquiets him. Part of the job is reading his crew. He really should have seen this coming. But it's not the first time that Michael Burnham has surprised him and he doubts it'll be the last.

Has he noticed her? Sure. Of course. He doesn't know how anyone couldn't. There was no way he could pursue her, though, for a whole host of reasons, so he'd put it down as something so impossible to be unworthy of further thought.

He turns her down, gentle as he can, tries harder to catch himself looking, smiling at her, and tells himself he's got a job to do.

 

*

 

As he leads Una to the mess hall they run into Burnham. Chris makes the introductions, which Burnham goes through with the rushed politeness of someone who's in a hurry but can't stand to be rude, then she tells him she needs to reschedule their meeting later and she's gone as soon as they sort that out.

"So, she's nice," Una murmurs, clothed in casualness but Chris can hear the hint of inquiry under it.

"Commander Burnham is an excellent officer." It comes out all wrong, too bland to work as an evasion, and Una's gaze sharpens.

"Seriously?"

"Jesus, Una, no," he hisses, glancing around the mercifully deserted corridor. But he wavers when Una's glare gets to him. "She...made a sugestion," he provides, delicate. "Naturally I declined."

"Good. How'd she take it?"

"She offered to give me a list of exactly twenty-seven reasons why she and I would be a bad idea, and assured me she'd already considered all of the variables before making her move."

Una's eyebrows go up. "Twenty-seven, huh?" Something like amusement glimmers in her eyes. "I was worried there wouldn't be anyone on this ship to keep your ego deflated in my absence. I like her."

Chris snorts. "Remind me to never introduce you two socially." Though he has a brief image, then, of what it would be like to have both Una and Burnham serving on the bridge. He wouldn't stand a _chance_. The thought delights him more than he thinks it should.

"Don't hurt her," Una says, her tone suddenly weighty.

"What? Told you, I said no."

She shakes her head. "It's not just...I saw the way you lit up when she came over. I know what you look like when you have a crush." There's a pause while she eyes him, seeming to wait for a denial. Chris swallows too hard and looks away. "Just, when it happens, _if_ ," she adds in concession to his protests, "if it happens, make sure you leave her better off than you found her. Okay?"

She keeps staring him down. He nods.

 

*

 

Then Vina happens.

When the day is done Chris collapses in his ready room chair, numb. He contemplates getting a drink but he'd have to get back up, go over to the replicator, and synthehol isn't worth the effort.

He is finally forced to his feet to answer the door, nearly swearing when Burnham walks in. He screws his eyes shut for a moment as he tries to find enough energy to master himself. Why _now_ of all times? Then they lock eyes. She looks as hollow as he feels.

She reaches for him first. He tells himself that over and over again, needing the reminder that he's not taking advantage and still feeling a bit like shit anyways. But she reasons her way through his hesitation with another reminder that she's a consenting adult and she's already thought through those twenty-seven, make that twenty- _eight_ reasons why it's a bad idea, which has to be the most ridiculous and unflattering proposition he's ever received.

"I just want..." she says then, soft, voice aching with such pain and such longing that Pike's gone, he's done, he surrenders. Stops fighting both of them and instead lets her kiss him again.

 

*

 

It shouldn't happen again. He knows that. And perhaps it wouldn't if not for what happens after she backs up against the wall then pushes and tugs him until he catches on to what she wants, then they fuck standing up. It's spectacular and also a spectacularly bad idea because it's hell on his back, so afterwards he sets her down with a groan as the muscles around his spine throb and Jesus Christ he's too old for this shit.

And he tells her so. Uses those words, or something like them. To his astonishment she cracks up, an almost startled bark of laughter pushing its way out of her chest, her eyes screwing shut as her nose crinkles up. He realizes two things: one, he's never heard her laugh before, never even seen her with a genuine smile; two, all he now wants is to make it happen again because if he thought she was pretty before she's _glorious_ when she's happy.

What he read of her file told him that she's lived through enough shit to be justified in never smiling again and he's not vain enough to think he can fix any of that, doesn't even think she'd want him to try. She's tough as all hell, tough like it's the only way she's survived this long, being tough, and somewhere along the line she forgot how to let herself be anything else.

But he tries his best in the fleeting moments they carve out, ten minutes here, thirty there, an hour if they're very lucky, to show her all of the softness he suspects she's denied herself.

She likes it when he pokes fun at himself, calls himself an old man, so he keeps doing that. One time, when she's sitting on his stomach, looking like an angel rising above him, he calls her 'hot stuff' and she surprises them both by laughing so hard that she falls off him sideways. So he keeps doing that.

Getting to see her playful side is a gift so unexpected, so breathtaking that Chris can feel his heart miss a beat when she smiles at him just the right way. Or maybe he really is getting old and he's about to have a stroke or something. It would almost be worth it, though; he could make the _ultimate_ old man joke to her.

He stares up at her sometimes–she's bossy and she loves to be on top so he almost always ends up looking up at her–while trying to remind himself that he really should get checked out in sickbay because there's no way the sight of her should be making his heart feel like _this_.

 

*

 

He pulls her file again not too long after their first time. Tells himself he's not looking for anything in particular, but he eyes her date of birth, does a bit of math, heaves a relieved sigh when the number he comes up with starts with a 3, then realizes what he's done and can't look her in the eye for about two days afterwards.

 

*

 

He almost calls her 'hot stuff' on the bridge once.

He'd argue that it's not all his fault. Sometimes, more and more, she gets into these almost cocky moods when she comes up with a great idea at work, seeming so pleased with herself, something he only ever used to see from her in private, so his wires get a little crossed.

"Great work, hot s–uh, commander," he manages to cover with a cough. Spock, because of course her _brother_ is there, gives him an odd look.

Michael is too busy going over to Tilly, the two of them lost in the thrill of science; she doesn't even notice his slip.

 

*

 

She's standing there telling him to kill her. She'd probably order him to kill her if she could get away with it. Fire is blazing in her eyes, determination coursing through every muscle of her body, and Chris wants to grab her, hold her to his chest and never let her go.

He lets her go.

The comms stay open the whole time. She's quiet at first; still tough as all hell, he thinks with a streak of rueful, probably misplaced pride. But then she starts making these noises, small, muffled gasps of pain. The noises don't stop. The gasps turn to whimpers, to moans. To hoarse, shrieking, _screams_ of raw agony.

All of a sudden the screaming stops. It's five thousand times worse.

 

*

 

As soon as he can slip away Chris disappears to his ready room. He barely makes it to the toilet in time. He retches until his stomach is cramping with dry heaves and tears are streaming down his face.

Then he cleans himself up. Goes back to work. He never tells Michael about it.

 

*

 

When it's all over, finally, he puts himself to bed, staring at the ceiling in peace for about two-fifths of a second before the screaming starts again in his head.

He doesn't know how long he's frozen, mind forcing him to relieve every single moment of her inconceivably horrific death. It feels like days. Like he's trapped under a weight, unable to escape, unable to do anything but lie there and take it.

The door chimes. It's her. She reaches for him, pushes him back onto the bed, and he obeys, trying to mask the trembling of his hands as they curl around her hips. She's desperate, grinding against him, looking halfway to tears, but she's _alive_.

After she exhausts herself she slips off him. He never came. She doesn't seem to notice and he doesn't care; he was struggling stay hard just for her sake anyways. All he wants is to breathe in her scent, touch every centimetre of her skin and hold her close forever.

It's the one night she clings to him. The only chance he ever gets to truly hold her. He twines himself around her, arms, legs, cradling the back of her head as he pretends not to notice the way she's sobbing into his chest. Lying awake long after she drifts off, Chris savours the warmth of her body alongside his then hates himself for it.

In the morning he kisses her puffy eyelids, wishing he could absorb all of that pain for her even though he knows she's tough enough to take it. She closes her eyes, shivering, suddenly seeming tiny in his arms, so small and unlike her usual, magnificent self that worry shoots through him.

But she pulls herself together and leaves.

 

*

 

At some point in the whole thing Chris figures out that the person who's going to get hurt isn't her. It's him.

Una never warned him about that. He's not sure if she didn't know him well enough to guess, or if she knew him exactly well enough to know he'd still go and do it anyways.

 

*

 

"Oh my God, I think you broke me," Michael groans one day, flopping off him then flipping to lie on her front. It's towards the end of their time together, but not close enough that they still can't find room for these soft moments.

"I'll take that as a compliment."

Her eyes are closed but she makes that face of hers, the scrunched-up one where her nose goes all crinkly, which he's figured out by now means he's being a total dork and she's trying very hard not to laugh at him. Her fingers curl into his bedsheets, gripping idly as she sighs then goes bonelessly contented, like in this small moment she has no troubles in the whole universe.

Chris leans over, kisses the back of her neck, making her wriggle a little with a happy hum. The wings of her shoulder blades flow smoothly under her dark skin. He kisses them, too. Then a few more kisses. Then a little lick here, a nip there.

"Again? Already?" She sounds a bit sleepy and a bit incredulous but not at all upset by the idea. He just hums, burying his face against the bumps of her spine before pulling away. Her eyes crack open as she shifts to look at him, her hand journeying up to cup his cheek.

Suddenly her expression goes darker, her eyes sadder. "I wish I could just stay here forever."

Chris's heart gives one of those throbs that have to be caused by her because if they really were an imminent stroke he would've died a while ago. "Me too, hot stuff," he murmurs.

She chuffs, half slipping into that 'Chris is being ridiculous' face again. Every nerve in his body is telling him to kiss her. For a second, as she gazes over at him, he almost thinks she _wants_ him to kiss her. He doesn't.

 

*

 

Thing is, even if he could somehow twist things around in his brain enough to blame her for the hurt he can sense coming whenever this ends, he wouldn't want to. From the very first he always knew this was about making her feel good, about getting some pleasure for himself alongside that, and nothing more. This was labelled with an expiration date in big black letters, and he still chose it anyways.

He'd never expected to have feelings, real feelings. But that's all on him. She hasn't led him on, has never angled for more than what they started as, so he's not even upset about it. Maybe at himself, a little, but not at her. Not a single bit.

It probably makes him the biggest fool in the known universe. And a few others, too.

 _Yeah_ , he thinks one day, staring at her on the bridge even though he yanks his gaze away a moment later. _I'd still do this all over again in a second._

 

*

 

It would be poetic if he could say watching her soar through the stars is her final surprise for him, but somehow it's not. Some part of him always knew this would happen. Not the specifics, but he always knew that she was meant for great things.

 

*

 

Wherever she ends up, whenever, Chris just hopes that she's happy. Hopes she's laughing.

He lies awake at night worrying that she's not. Trying to grapple with the realization that he'll never know.

 

*

 

"Shit, Chris," Una greets him when they finally get a chance to sit down alone. "You look awful."

"Thanks," he retorts, hearing it come out weak and sighing at that. Una just keeps looking at him, so he tells her. Everything. Not the details, not the sex. The sex isn't really the part that meant the most to him, in retrospect.

"I'm sorry," Una murmurs after he's run out of words.

He shrugs. "I'm not." And surprising everyone except him, he means it.

 

**Author's Note:**

> See? That 'angst' tag didn't lie. 
> 
> This fic is technically a companion piece/mirror image to my previous fic [nor made me feel so sweet](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18675865). However, reading order is not important, and both can be read as stand-alones.


End file.
